One does not have to read Mandelstam’s work in the original to realize that he led a fascinating and tragic life, which is of
interest apart from the artistic merit of his verse. Also, the story of his books—how and when they appeared, the difficulties of getting accurate bibliographic information, and the travails of trying to collect these books today—will be familiar to collectors
of great writers in English or any other
language. But, more important, Mandelstam lived and wrote under terrible hardships—censorship, threats from Stalin’s government, incarceration and torture, extreme poverty and hunger, and internal exile. As awful as these conditions were
for ordinary Russians, they were probably even worse for Jewish intellectuals. How Mandelstam was able to create transcendent poetry in such wretched circumstances — and how his wife was able to preserve his work during and after their years of internal exile — is a story of the triumphant
human spirit. (from the article)
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